“Deepfakes and synthetic media are unreal, but the battle in the mind and the damage to the body are real.”

We live in an age where truth is constantly being rewritten by technology. Every scroll, swipe, and click carries both light and darkness. The same digital tools that connect the world are now being used to deceive it.

Deepfakes are the latest and most dangerous face of deception. The term refers to synthetic media created using artificial intelligence. Through machine learning and deep learning algorithms, thousands of images and videos of a person can be analyzed to replicate their voice, expressions, and gestures. Once trained, the software can produce highly realistic yet completely fabricated videos. The result is a dangerous blend of technical precision and psychological manipulation.

The explosion of information and artificial intelligence has created what can be called a synthetic reality. This overwhelming flow of content has become fertile ground for a pandemic of misinformation and disinformation. Yet, the weaponization of falsehood is not new. The Mahabharata offers an ancient example: the false news of Ashwatthama’s death changed the fate of Dronacharya and altered the course of the war. Today, technology has turned that single lie into millions of digital illusions, spreading faster than truth itself.

The real threat of deepfakes does not come from technology alone, but from human nature. People instinctively believe what they see. This trust in visual evidence, once considered a safeguard of truth, has become a vulnerability in the digital........

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